Va. Quakes Have Been No Great Shakes

Old Virginia

August 15, 1993|By PARKE ROUSE Columnist

When the English settled Virginia, they were shocked to learn how hot the summer got and how violent were the thunderstorms. And, during the 18th century, they also learned about three other threats: autumnal hurricanes, spring floods on upland rivers (particularly the James and the Potomac) and earthquakes.

Earthquakes?

Yes, earthquakes. The Seismological Observatory for Virginia, which is part of Virginia Tech at Blacksburg, compiles records of earthquake tremors reported in Virginia as far back as 1774. There have been at least 131 earthquakes, most of them in the Piedmont section of the state around Charlottesville.

Apparently no really destructive earthquake has ever shaken Virginia. However, equipment for precisely measuring quake intensity, like the Richter Scale, has not been available until recent years.

VPI's Seismological Observatory is part of a chain of earthquake reporting centers around the nation. Two of its scientists, M.G. Hopper and G.A. Bollinger, have compiled two listings of recorded Virginia quakes, one covering the years 1774 to 1900 and the other from 1900 to 1974. Their reports don't make very exciting reading - and I find this reassuring.

The first recorded earthquake in Virginia occurred at 2 in the afternoon on Feb. 21, 1774. It was a relatively big one, drawing reports from six localities in Virginia and one from North Carolina, embracing 58,000 square miles. At Westover plantation on the James River in Charles City County, someone in the household of William Byrd III, reported: "Last Monday, about two o'clock, a smart shock of an earthquake was felt ... which shook the dwelling house very much."

It was felt also in Williamsburg, Richmond, Petersburg, Fredericksburg and Charlottesville. At Monticello, an unidentified correspondent - Thomas Jefferson, perhaps? - wrote "two violent earthquake shocks" were felt on Feb. 21, 1774, and another the next day.

Someone in Petersburg, commenting on an earlier report from Richmond, added: "The motion of the earth [in the Feb. 21 earthquake] was still greater [than in Richmond], many houses having been moved considerably off their foundations, and the inhabitants so much alarmed as to run out of doors." In Fredericksburg, the quake "shook the glasses on the table, etc. and terrified the inhabitants greatly, but no bad consequences attended it."

The shock was also felt 300 miles from Tidewater Virginia in Salem, N.C., where it caused "all the bells hanging in the store to ring, but was not noticed by all the people."

Two days after the Feb. 21 earthquake, a strong aftershock was felt in Williamsburg. One resident reported, "On Wednesday night there was a violent tremor of the earth."

The VPI earthquake data lists no other Tidewater quake until Dec. 31, 1816. A report from Norfolk on that date says, "Several of our citizens ... felt a shock here." On the same day a ship on the Atlantic near Norfolk "experienced a very severe shock of an earthquake, which was accompanied by a noise so much resembling that of a vessel when striking on a rock or wreck - that they for some time believed it actually to be the case."

The most extensive earthquake in Virginia's history occurred March 9, 1828, for it was felt and reported from Philadelphia southward to Raleigh, including such places as Smithfield, Norfolk, Petersburg and Richmond.

In the White House, President John Quincy Adams that night recorded in his diary: , "There was this evening the shock of an earthquake, the first which I ever distinctly noticed at the moment when it happened. I was writing in this book, when the table began to shake under my hand and the floor under my feet. ... It continued about two minutes, then ceased. It was about 11 at night. I immediately left writing, and went to my bed-chamber, where my wife was in bed, much alarmed."

Five years later, in 1833, another strong quake shook Piedmont. At Dover, in Goochland, 42 miners were killed when a coal pit buried them. In Charlottesville, Jefferson's granddaughter wrote: "We had the most severe shock from an earthquake yesterday morning that had ever been experienced before. ... The windows rattled violently, and I began to fear the chimney might be shaken off. When it had reached its height it gradually diminished."

In 1897, Newport News was rocked by a quake on May 31, at 1:38 in the afternoon, that "frightened a great many people," according to VPI records. It was worst "near the edge of the water, where it caused the piers and buildings to rock," though without damage. In Norfolk and Portsmouth, householders, feeling the shock "rushed into the streets panic stricken."

The shock's center was found to be in Giles County, but it was felt also in West Virginia, Kentucky, North and South Carolina, Tennessee and Ohio.

The last significant Virginia earthquake of record was on Dec. 11, 1969, centering around Richmond but felt as far away as Roanoke and upper North Carolina.

Seismologists believe earthquake fault lines are created by subterranean pressures caused by the shift of huge "plates" beneath the earth. Fortunately for Virginians, no active fault lines seem apt to disturb Virginia's tranquility in the foreseeable future.

It's those August and autumnal hurricanes that we coastal Virginians have to worry about.